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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24827269">Take This Pain for You (I Will Pull You Through)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretEnigma/pseuds/SecretEnigma'>SecretEnigma</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Sun Dies (Night Rise) verse [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Final Fantasy XV</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, At Least He Isn't Actively Hindering, Background Relationships, Bahamut (Final Fantasy XV) Being a Jerk, Because He's a Giant Immortal Space Dragon, Brotherly Bonding, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Family Drama, Family Feels, Fem!Prompto, Found Family, Gen, Gilgamesh Is Going To Strangle Nyx, He Doesn't Mean To Though, He Just Doesn't 'Get' Humans, He Just Got You Back Idiot, He's Trying Though?, Hurt Nyx Ulric, I promise this is a happy ending, In Which Somnus is Nyx and Nyx has a Brother to Save, It's the Starscourge what do you want from me, Look Out Fate an Ulric Is Happening, Minor Body Horror, Near Death Experiences, Nyx Ulric Lives, Nyx: Shan't, Reincarnation, Stop Doing Reckless Things, We Just Have to Suffer First, just getting that out of the way, nevermind, sorta - Freeform, why is that a tag</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 00:13:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>16,077</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24827269</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretEnigma/pseuds/SecretEnigma</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the middle of the Insomnia falling apart, Nyx put on the Ring of the Lucii and remembered. In the light of dawn, he swore he would find a way to make things right.</p>
<p>Bahamut gives him one chance to change the Prophecy without dooming the world. If he fails, the cost will be twice as high.</p>
<p>But that's okay. Nyx has pulled through worse odds, and this time he has the Oracle and his old Shield by his side to help him out. Now all he has to do is find his brother and fix this. Even if it kills him.</p>
<p>A small price to pay to create a future for those who want (who deserve, so much more than him) to see it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ardyn Izunia &amp; Somnus Lucis Caelum, Gilgamesh (Final Fantasy XV) &amp; Somnus Lucis Caelum, Gladiolus Amicitia &amp; Prompto Argentum &amp; Noctis Lucis Caelum &amp; Ignis Scientia, Lunafreya Nox Fleuret &amp; Noctis Lucis Caelum, Lunafreya Nox Fleuret/Nyx Ulric</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Sun Dies (Night Rise) verse [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1748701</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>228</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Take This Pain for You (I Will Pull You Through)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hoozah I finished editing this sequel!</p>
<p>Now I can start working on the next sequel in this rapidly spawning AU. *Falls over*.</p>
<p>To anyone finding this without having read the first one, please, PLEASE go back and read the first one in this series, everything will make so much more sense if you do. To everyone else, hi, I hope you came for angst because this is about 16k words and I have a LOT angst to pack in there.</p>
<p>Also if anyone wants to read more HCs/things about this, you can wander over to my tumblr: https://secret-engima.tumblr.com, then just search for the tag Sun Dies (Night Rise) verse.</p>
<p>Also also the title of this fic comes from the song "With You Til the End" by Sam Tinnesz because it ... really seemed to fit the fic. Have a listen if you want: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT_wKFBgYlo</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It happened maybe midway through their journey. After the fall of Insomnia, after Nyx put on the Ring and <b>remembered</b>. After he had tracked down Princess and told her the truth of the Prophecy and the Accursed —the truth of Somnus’s-, his-, sins—. After they had decided to try to rewrite the ending of the Prophecy and had fled into the wilderness to avoid the cold chains of Niflheim. It was after … a lot of things, but not everything. After awakening Titan —to rewrite the end, at least some of the story had to be written, and for all it was reckless to cut it so close, they <b>needed</b> the Astrals for their half-baked, still in-progress plan to work— and forging the Covenant on behalf of the new king.</p>
<p>After Nyx had dragged Princess to the nearest little Galahdian outpost. A tiny burg of refugees cobbled together in the wilds where only Hunters and former jungle folk dared live. After he had stood before a Gathering and told his story of the Fall of Insomnia and the Betrayal, sworn on the Storm-Father’s staff and his ancestors’ memories that his words were true and wept silently at the <b>wail</b> of grief and pain and rage that rose from the community in the wake of his words. After he had silently accepted the braid of accomplishment pushed on him by the Elders and Chief’s of four different Clans —none of them his, but he was the last Chief of the Ulrics, so he would submit to their judgment—, and carefully, painstakingly, woven the braid of his Clan into Princess’s hair to claim her as his and free her heart from Niflheim’s touch.</p>
<p>He knew in her wide eyes that for all she had tentatively accepted his request to adopt her into the Ulric Clan, she had not understood what it meant, what his purpose was. Not until all of the Clans had bent the knee and sworn themselves to secrecy and aid of the Oracle’s goal. Whatever she needed, whatever she desired, the Clans would give to her. They would send word through their Hunters and their family to all the Clan branches outside of Insomnia, even to the shores of Galahd itself, that the Oracle was now <b>theirs</b>. Theirs to protect. Their Ulric Oracle to hide from Niflheim’s gaze, and fight for against traitorous blades.</p>
<p>They would send word, too, of the Betrayal. The names of those Nyx had known were traitors but not if they had survived or not. If they showed their face to any of the communities, any of the Clans, they would be cast out as Kinslayers and Oathbreakers.</p>
<p>It was after Nyx had accepted the apologies and grieving vows of vengeance from those who were of the same Clans as the traitors —Lazarus and Furia, Arra and Bellum and Bestia and oh it <b>hurt</b> to stand there and accept their vows even as his heart still loved the blade-brothers that had betrayed him—. After they had gathered supplies and left, not daring to stay in one place for too long.</p>
<p>After Ravus had found them and Nyx had come possibly too close to killing him —out of fury, out of pain, out of <b>rage</b> for the older brother who insisted he was protecting his sibling in one breath and threatening her the next for trying to <b>help</b> people and <b>fulfill her oaths</b>—.</p>
<p>Three nights after that … incident. After Lunafreya had slapped her shocked brother across the face and Nyx had used his Galahdian and Hunter contacts to make the two of them disappear into the wilds, Nyx fell asleep in the bed he was sharing with Princess —there was only one bed in this hotel room, they couldn’t afford two rooms, and they had both refused to let the other sleep on the floor or hard chairs—. He slept, and he dreamed.</p>
<p>In his dreams, the Draconian came.</p>
<p>
  
  <b>“You tread a dangerous line, Mystic.”</b>
</p>
<p>“Nyx,” he snapped irritably, more than a little annoyed at having his dreams interrupted when they had, for <b>once</b>, been pleasant rather than nightmares of the front lines or the fall of Insomnia or his sins of a past lifetime. “My name is Nyx Ulric. I don’t answer to ‘Somnus’ or ‘Mystic’ anymore.”</p>
<p>
  
  <b>“Yet still you cling to his memory and rush to calamity in the name of kinship with the Accursed.”</b>
</p>
<p>“That’s different. That’s <b>family</b>. Of course I’m going to protect family. And whether or not I answer to Somnus anymore has no bearing on the fact that I owe my brother … everything.”</p>
<p>
  
  <b>“You would doom this Star to darkness for the sake of the Accursed.”</b>
</p>
<p>Nyx took a deep breath, reminded himself of all the reasons he shouldn’t set the Astral in front of him on fire. Namely that if he did, Bahamut would smite him, and then there would be no one around to protect Princess or help his brother. He threw back his shoulders, ignoring the way his clothes seemed to shift between Somnus’s favorite blue robes and his own Kingsglaive uniform with each breath, “I would find a way to protect both this world <b>and</b> my <b>family</b>. My <b>brother</b> has suffered enough because of my mistakes, my sins, my <b>pride</b>, and I will not add the suffering of my descendent to that anymore than it has been added already.”</p>
<p>The Draconian tilted his great helm, and the magic around them cooled with displeasure, <b>“You would attempt to break the chains of fate, to avoid the consequences of what you wrought a lifetime ago. This will not stand. You will cease this foolish crusade and stand no more in the path of the Oracle and the Chosen King.”</b></p>
<p>Nyx gaped at the Draconian, torn between the fury and reverence of his Somnus memories and the … indignation born from the irreverence and recklessness of this lifetime. “You…” the great dragon of War tilted his head a little more, as if in silent question, and Nyx blurted, “You really <b>don’t </b>have a clue how humans work do you?” He shook his head and snorted, “Six, no wonder I was terrified of you a lifetime ago. You don’t have a stick up your butt so much as you have it welded to your <b>spine</b>.”</p>
<p>Wings made of steel blades flared in something that might have been indignation, <b>“You-!”</b></p>
<p>Nyx bared his teeth, “Nu-uh, you said your piece, you said it two thousand years ago when you sentenced my entire line to suffer for my mistakes and sealed my <b>brother</b> in a dungeon so that I couldn’t go down there and fix it. I couldn’t even go <b>see him</b> to apologize. Now it’s my turn to speak, so shut up and listen!”</p>
<p>He took a deep breath and braced to be smote by a furious Astral. When nothing happened for several seconds, he glanced up and saw Bahamut’s tail slowly twitching back and forth, <b>“…Very well, Mystic. Say your peace.”</b></p>
<p>So he did. He spoke of the Prophecy and how it made little sense, he railed at the injustice of making Noctis face the consequences when Nyx was <b>here</b>, when the soul of the man who had started this mess walked again. Where was the justice in making a child pay for the crimes of the ancestor? Where was the justice in dooming an Oracle to die to fulfill the task <b>Bahamut</b> had given her? Bahamut could rouse the other Astrals far more easily than Lunafreya, so why didn’t he? Bahamut claimed everything was for the sake of the Star, yet instead of helping, he threw the responsibility to two lines of humans and then seemed somehow <b>insulted</b> when said humans decided to find a way to fulfill their mission <b>and </b>survive it.</p>
<p><b>“Humanity cannot break the chains of fate,”</b> Bahamut intoned and Nyx raged, with lightning on his tongue and fire in his hands and a crown of ghostly crystal on his brow that it was not <b>fate</b> that had placed these chains, it was <b>the Draconian</b>.</p>
<p>“Just give me a <b>chance</b>!” He screamed, throat raw in this dreamscape from how long he had argued with the Draconian at every turn, “Give me a chance to protect what is mine! To make up for what I did!”</p>
<p>
  
  <b>“And if I refuse?”</b>
</p>
<p>Nyx took a deep breath and blinked back tears. Took another breath to stabilize and then spat at the Draconian’s feet, “Then to the pyre with you. To the pyre with your Prophecy. To the pyre with your <b>thick dragon skull</b>.” He locked eyes with Bahamut of War and Prophecy and bared his teeth, the fury of a lost brother and the stubbornness of a Galahdian Chief in every line, “I’ll save the world, but not at the cost of my family. I will protect my Clan, I will save my brother, and I will fight <b>every last one of the Six</b> if that’s what it takes to do it!”</p>
<p>The silence that came after was thick and dangerous. Then, slowly, as if every word was a weight all its own, <b>“Truly one of Fulgarian’s children. Stubborn and wild to a soul.” </b>The Draconian drew a sword and slammed it down point first into the blue void between them, rested his great claws on the pommel and rumbled, <b>“Very well, Mystic, your words have been heard and your intent measured. I grant you one chance, to rewrite the end of the Prophecy you created and pull free the Accursed from his corruption.”</b> There was a pause, almost contemptuous, pitying, like a parent looking at a tantrum-throwing child and deciding they needed to live through a mistake to learn its folly, <b>“In acknowledgment of your will, I will even grant you one boon to aid you in your quest.”</b></p>
<p>Nyx flexed his fingers, longing for the kukri he could not summon in his dreams, “A boon?”</p>
<p>
  
  <b>“One boon of your choice, to aid you in fulfilling the Prophecy without the death of the Lucis Caelum and Nox Fleuret lines.”</b>
</p>
<p>He narrowed his eyes, “What’s the catch?”</p>
<p>
  
  <b>“The boon may not be one given to another, and the boon cannot be my Covenant nor the Covenants of any of the Six. You may not request the end of the Prophecy as your boon.”</b>
</p>
<p>Nyx nodded slowly, running over the terms mentally, racing to think of something that would genuinely help him that only the Astral could grant. Something that applied to him and him alone, that was not Covenant or the end of the Prophecy. Something… something to give him a chance. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to calm himself enough to think, to pull on the memories of a lifetime of being king and strategist and grieving sibling. He had spent a lifetime trying to figure out how to undo his mistake, inventing magical medicines unheard of in his time and becoming known as the Mystic for his in-depth studies of magic itself. He had spent a lifetime after that learning the Old Tales and Songs.</p>
<p>Surely there was … <b>something</b> in there. Something that would give him an edge more than the magic already burbling under his skin, at least twice as strong or more than it had been as Somnus —because magic grew stronger as it got older, and Somnus had lived two thousand years ago and slumbered in the Ring for those years, growing ever older and stronger—.</p>
<p>Wait.</p>
<p>An idea bloomed, reckless and possibly suicidal. An idea that spiraled into a burningly desperate plan that Libertus would have knocked him down for. But Libertus wasn’t here, and it was better than no plan at all, or worse, letting the Prophecy go unchallenged and not taking full advantage of Bahamut’s condescending chance.</p>
<p>Nyx looked up with a clenched jaw and the Draconian’s tail twitched at the tip, <b>“You have chosen a boon?”</b></p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>
  
  <b>“Speak then.”</b>
</p>
<p>Nyx opened his mouth and spoke. The Draconian <b>stared</b> for an eternity, then called him a fool. Nyx laughed bitterly and asked when had he ever <b>not</b> been a fool. It was his foolishness that had gotten his entire family into this mess after all. This way at least, his foolishness could get them out of it. Bahamut radiated skepticism, but tilted his helm, <b>“Very well, Mystic-.”</b></p>
<p>“Nyx. And if you’re going to call me an epithet, at least give me one that fits <b>me</b>, not the man I used to be.”</p>
<p>
  
  <b>“…Very well then. The Draconian grants the boon of the <em>Temerarious</em>.”</b>
</p>
<p>Nyx snorted despite the tension of the moment, “Did you just name me ‘the Reckless’ but fancier?”</p>
<p>Bahamut ignored the interruption, but the emphasis he had given to the new epithet made Nyx think that the Astral had, in fact, named him the fanciest word for reckless he could think of. It … almost made the sick churning in Nyx’s stomach settle. Just from the ridiculous humor of it. <b>“Go forth with your chosen boon, defy the Prophecy you have set into motion. But know that should you fail, the price that falls upon you and your line will be twice the weight, and there will be no further chances.”</b></p>
<p>Nyx sobered, grit his teeth to keep from screaming as the boon carved its way into his bones, “Understood.”</p>
<p>There was a long silence, then a surprisingly soft murmur from the Astral of, <b>“May your body be strong enough to withstand what your soul intends, young Temerarious. Lest your fate be one even the Six shy from.”</b></p>
<p>Nyx had no chance to respond as the floor of blue beneath him shattered and he fell-.</p>
<p>Jolted back to himself in bed, breathing hard and shaking, his skin <b>burning</b> from the boon clawing at his bones. Princess was awake and leaning over him, her hand on his cheek and her face a picture of concern. He suppressed the sob that wanted to rise and instead leaned forward to press his forehead against hers. He inhaled shakily, swallowed the words that wanted to spill from his lips —<em>I’m afraid, I’m desperate, I wish I wasn’t falling for you because this already </em><b><em>hurts</em></b>— and instead whispered, “I have a plan for my brother.”</p>
<p>“Nyx?”</p>
<p>He opened his eyes and pulled away with a thin smile, “I have a plan. To fix this.” He reached out a ran his thumb over her cheek, letting his magic reach out and tangle gently with hers, tugging at the fatigue and bone weariness that had plagued her since carrying the Ring and awakening Titan. He let his instincts guide his magic, soothing and pulling gently, but only as much as she allowed while she watched him in concern, “I just have to get close enough. Just once, close enough to punch him right in his mouth if I have to. That’s all I need.”</p>
<p>“And then?” He didn’t answer, lowered his hand and flopped onto his back to stare at the ceiling. He half-flinched when she grabbed his chin and pulled it so he had to look at her, her expression one of open concern even in the darkness, “And then what, Nyx Ulric? What will you do?”</p>
<p><em>What I’ve wanted to do since before I died the first time.</em> “Fix what I started.” She started to protest, he dared hold a finger to her lips, “Just … trust me on this. Okay Princess?”</p>
<p>“Nyx…”</p>
<p>“Please, Lunafreya. Trust me.”</p>
<p>She sighed and very, very slowly settled down again. One of her slender hands came to rest on his shoulder and he fought down a shiver, stamped on the urge to take her hand and kiss her palm. “Alright Nyx,” she whispered, “I do trust you. Just … you will be careful, won’t you?”</p>
<p>He grinned bitterly at the ceiling, “As careful as I ever am, Princess.”</p>
<p>“Luna.”</p>
<p>“Hmm?”</p>
<p>“I believe you’ve more than earned the right to call me Luna.”</p>
<p><em>Don’t say that. It will just make it hurt more.</em> “Okay. Thanks … Luna.”</p>
<p>She let it go, and didn’t ask him again as they trekked across the wilderness. As they woke up Ramuh and fled from her brother and his Imperial forces with the help of the many pockets of Galahdian refugees that dotted Lucis, all of them far more skilled at hiding from Niflheim than anyone —especially Ravus and his noble-born officers— gave them credit for. As they trekked down into the Tempering Grounds and Nyx reunited with his old Shield —as he said “come, we are going to fix what we unmade” and Gil followed him without hesitation—. She didn’t ask as their feelings began to slide dangerously out of the territory of a royal and her guard or even just two friends. She didn’t ask him his plan as he spent evenings with her, burying his nose in her hair and lacing their fingers tightly together as she leaned against him and let their magics twist together, him pulling gently with his magic in an effort to ease the pain that came from awakening two Astrals.</p>
<p>She trusted him. This princess, this Oracle daughter of the woman he had betrayed so long ago … trusted him enough not to ask even as the Prophecy grew ever closer to fulfillment with no meeting of Ardyn in sight. Astrals, what had he ever done to earn that kind of trust?</p>
<p>He told Gilgamesh his plan. Part of it anyway. He told him as they traversed the waters to Altissia on a boat crewed by a group of steel-eyed Furia —the captain was Tredd’s cousin, and Nyx mourned the similarities in their faces, the betrayal that still sat sour on his tongue when the man apologized for the cousin who had wronged all of them—. He made sure to tell Gil when Luna wasn’t there to hear, because she had to focus on the coming trial of awakening another Astral. She didn’t need to hear how Nyx thought his brother would hunt her down and strike now rather than later, here at the end when only one Astral remained slumbering —Bahamut was awake if hidden away and Shiva walked among them sometimes in her guise as Messenger and Ardyn would be well aware of both those things—. Many things had probably changed about his brother, made him harder and crueler and more insane —all Somnus’s fault, all things Nyx had to make right—, but his sense of drama? His flair for convoluted plans that always turned out the way he wanted?</p>
<p>He doubted even the Six themselves could take that away. If anything, going mad had probably made Ardyn even <b>more</b> dramatic. Which meant Nyx’s plan … had a chance. And that was all he needed. One chance.</p>
<p>Gil agreed to his part of the plan, but the mask that was his best friend’s face still carried an air of suspicion when Nyx would not elaborate on the plan beyond Gil’s part. He tried to push, but Nyx refused. “Just keep Luna safe until I’m done, Gil. Come find us after the Covenant is made and Noctis is safe.”</p>
<p>“Nyx…”</p>
<p>“Promise me, Gil.” He had looked up, and he knew what Gil saw in his eyes, the emotions there that he could not act on, “Please.”</p>
<p>Gil dipped his chin and pressed a fist over where his heart should be, “It will be done, my friend.”</p>
<p>They slipped into Altissia, and there Nyx’s ability to hide them ended, for there were no Galahdian communities in Accordo, let alone the capital city. Luna stepped into the role and the First Secretary —a hard, cold woman who’s edges were sharpened on behalf of her people, a woman both lifetimes of Nyx could respect— granted them asylum, then went a step further and completely obscured any knowledge of Gilgamesh’s and Nyx’s existence. And then … they waited.</p>
<p>Nyx slipped out of their hiding place the night he heard that the Chosen King had finally arrived —not that he was announced as such of course, but Gentiana had come and told him, then obscured the eyes of those who would notice him leaving—. He wound his way through the nightlife of Altissia, listening to the soft rhythms of city, to the street music and the chatter of voices from people indoors and out. No one noticed him walking on the rooftops, light as a cat as he jumped over entire sections of street and stairs, watching them from the shadows above as he made his way to the Leville.</p>
<p>A glimpse of the canine messenger Gentiana had told him to look for and he landed silently on the balcony of the king’s suite. He hesitated, because the lights were off and he … didn’t want to wake up his great grandson —his king, the son of his king to whom he owed a life debt, and his head hurt from the difference in how his two lifetimes saw the Chosen King—. He tapped on the window before he could think better of it, light and careful, deciding that if they were too tired to wake up and answer, he would leave. There was a long pause, and a muffled yelp of a voice before it was silenced.</p>
<p>The balcony doors cracked open, revealing a young man in a rumpled shirt and glasses —Ignis Scientia, the prince’s Hand—, a dagger in one hand. Behind him, the Shield loomed, Gil’s descendent Gladiolus Amicitia. Not as tall as Gil, but broad-shouldered and hard-eyed —scared, like he was afraid that whatever threat came through, he might not be able to stop it, and Nyx wondered abruptly if he had gone to the Tempering Grounds and found only silence where Gilgamesh, his fated final test, had once been—. The man in glasses narrowed his eyes, “Who are you and how did you get on our balcony?”</p>
<p>“I climbed.” Nyx answered honestly, then slowly dropped to one knee, “Gentiana told me to come find you,” he murmured, “my name is Nyx Ulric, I’m a Kingsglaive who served under King Regis.”</p>
<p>There was a moment’s hesitation, a pursing of lips in skepticism from Scientia, but then he was being nudged aside by the sleep rumpled young king, “How did you get here?”</p>
<p>“Noct,” hissed Amicitia warningly, one hand gripping the young king’s shoulder, ready to yank him back.</p>
<p>Nyx pressed his fist over his heart in a practiced move, but did not lower his eyes from Noctis’s face —he looked like Nyx had, a lifetime ago, like Somnus, so close that the similarity was eerie and oh, oh how much danger was the mere resemblance putting him in when Ardyn was near?—, “I smuggled myself in on a boat, Your Majesty. I came with the Oracle.”</p>
<p>The young king jerked in place and his eyes widened, “Luna?”</p>
<p>Nyx smile was a little lopsided and more than a little sad —aching for things he could not say and dared not claim—, “She’s doing well. The First Secretary has her somewhere safe. I escorted Luna from Insomnia to here…” his smile fell, “those were my last orders. From King Regis.” He watched Noctis flinch and felt nothing but sympathy and sorrow, “I’m sorry for your loss, Your Majesty,” Nyx whispered, “he was a kind man.”</p>
<p>“Yeah … uh … yeah, he was.” Noctis rasped, his body shivering with suppressed magic and emotion before he stilled, “Were you … there?”</p>
<p>Nyx closed his eyes and tried not to see the death of his king —his descendent— painted behind his eyelids, “Yes, Your Majesty. I was there at the last.”</p>
<p>It was Scientia who spoke up next, fragile and wary, “Come inside. I do not believe this is a discussion for the open air.”</p>
<p>Nyx entered, and the small blond of their group flipped on a light and fidgeted her way to a seat next to Noctis, who sank onto the side of one of the beds with shaking hands, “Tell me everything.”</p>
<p>If he had only been Somnus, perhaps he would have tried to protest the order. To brush over the details for the sake of the young man. But he was Nyx now and not just Somnus, and he knew what that was like. To lose something —everything— and <b>need</b> the details, need to know exactly how it had happened. Maybe it would be better to spare the young king, but that was not what Noctis had asked. So Nyx told them. He told them of that last day in Insomnia, Captain’s odd behavior, the disappearance of Luna and the realization she had been kidnapped, that there was a <b>fleet</b> just waiting for the chance to strike.</p>
<p>He told them of the trap. The Betrayal. Of leaping into the Citadel with Luna out of a gunship and rushing into the treaty room in time to see … the Shield, pinned high to the wall with a sword through his chest —Gladiolus made a pained noise deep in his ribs, like he could feel the sword in his own heart—, Ravus writhing on the ground with his arm on fire. General Glauca and King Regis and the bloody hand sans it’s Ring. Nyx told them of their flight to the elevator, and King Regis’s last command —plea, from one man to another, but that one part Nyx withheld, a memory for him and him alone—.</p>
<p>Nyx sat crosslegged on the floor and watched his grand-descendent’s face pale as Nyx spoke of how, on their way to the underground parking lot, King Regis stopped and built a stationary shield that was solid, that would last even beyond death. The things he’d said, the things he’d promised.</p>
<p>Noctis buried his face in his hands and cried as Nyx whispered of the death, the clean strike through the heart while General Glauca —Captain, Titus— roared in agony, because he was a traitor too and to kill the monarch who gave you magic was to feel that death as your own.</p>
<p>Nyx fell silent and let them mourn for a while, then spoke, “Your Majesty.”</p>
<p>Noctis flinched from the title, then raised his head with a bitter, “What.”</p>
<p>“I know it hurts, but you need to put off grieving a little while longer.” The young king bristled and Nyx cut in, gentle but firm —the same voice he had used on his children as Somnus, trying to impart the wisdom his own father never had, the voice he used when teaching his grandchildren the lessons he realized too late in his own life—, “Lunafreya is still alive, Your Majesty. Your companions are still alive. But if you aren’t careful, that’s not going to last much longer.” That got the young king’s attention, bitter and angry as it was, “The Empire is coming for you. More dangerously, <b>Ardyn</b> is coming for you, Your Majesty, and he’s not going to hold back this time.”</p>
<p>The blond piped up shyly, “He’s uh, helped us out a few times actually? Even if he is a creep.”</p>
<p>Nyx spared a moment to fix the girl with a look, “Make no mistake, he is <b>not</b> on your side. He wants Noctis, specifically, to suffer and he wants the Oracle dead. To ruin everything now would be far worse, far more devastating, than ruining things while you were on a continent you could disappear into, and that will appeal to him.” Ardyn had always had a slow temper, but when it was roused, he’d always been <b>vindictive</b> about it. Nyx shifted his gaze back to Noctis, “Furthermore, the Tidemother is herself unpredictable and prone to wrath, and the First Secretary isn’t going to be too keen on letting you rouse her for a Covenant.” Nyx leaned forward, “You need your head in the game, Your Majesty, or you’re going to lose everything you’ve managed to keep.”</p>
<p>The young king’s face was screwed up in a bitter scowl, a dark expression that promised outbursts of grief and denial, and Nyx braced himself. But instead of that, something oddly wise and intuitive slipped out, “You talk about him like you know him. Ardyn, I mean.”</p>
<p>Scientia jumped in, “Indeed. Are you familiar with Chancellor Izunia?”</p>
<p>Nyx stilled, a thousand things to say rising up and choking him —his fault, his fault, all of this all these sins were all his <b>fault</b>—. He breathed in, breathed out, slid into a submissive kneel again, “You could say that. You could even say I … know him better than anyone else currently alive.” Nyx inhaled, then lifted his gaze to meet his descendant’s, “Ardyn’s last name wasn’t always <b>Izunia</b>, Your Majesty.”</p>
<p>The blond breathed a confused, “seriously?” and Amicitia straightened up from where he had been leaning against the wall, “Wait-, are you saying-?”</p>
<p>Nyx kept his gaze on the young king. He couldn’t explain all the circumstances, he couldn’t explain just how <b>deep</b> and <b>old</b> this situation ran. Not yet. But … he could still tell the truth, “He’s my older brother.”</p>
<p>Amicitia cursed viciously, the blond yelped, and the young king was suddenly standing, looming over Nyx with conflicted, confused, <b>angry</b> eyes. Scientia’s movements as he adjusted his glasses were lined with danger, “That. Is a very bold claim to make, all things considered.” All things being the loss of Insomnia, the fact that traitors had all but let Niflheim in on a red carpet, the fact that the only word they had for Nyx’s loyalty was his own.</p>
<p>Nyx stayed kneeling, submissive even though the pieces of him that were Somnus were galled by it, “I am <b>loyal</b> to the line of Lucis Caelum, Your Majesty. I haven’t had any contact with my brother in <b>years</b>, and I can guarantee you that he thinks I’m dead.” He allowed himself a bitter bark of laughter, “We … didn’t part on good terms. I thought … I only realized recently that Ardyn Izunia was <b>my</b> Ardyn. My <b>brother</b>.” Swallowing hurt around the lump in his throat, and he finally dropped his gaze, “I never thought he would go this far.”</p>
<p>“You thought he was dead.”</p>
<p>Nyx stamped down the hysterical laughter that tried to rise, “I knew he was alive, I knew he wanted nothing to do with me and … that he thought I was dead. I just didn’t know where he was, that he had…” just thinking about it made Nyx sick. All those centuries locked away, all those years in the later half of Somnus’s life he had <b>railed</b> at the Draconian for magically sealing the prison so Somnus could not go inside and undo what he had done. All that time … and now he appeared as Niflheim’s chancellor. Had Niflheim found him? The seal holding the prison shut to mortal men worn thin with time to let them through? Or had Ardyn gotten out earlier, maddened by his illness and the time alone —the agony of how he had been strung up by his chains— and eventually decided the budding Empire was his best bet for revenge? Nyx didn’t know. He closed his eyes, “I didn’t know he had joined the Empire.”</p>
<p>Nyx opened his eyes and forced his gaze up to the face that looked like an old, long forgotten mirror, “Please, Your Majesty, whatever plans you make for the coming Covenant, let me deal with Ardyn. It’s been … a long time, but I still know my brother, I know how he thinks. I know how he fights. I can stop him.”</p>
<p>The silence was tense and uncomfortable, then the blond whispered shakily, “You’d … you’d really kill your own brother to protect Noct?”</p>
<p>Nyx flinched, unable to keep the old memory of his sword sliding through Ardyn’s chest out of his head, “No. Even if I was … even if I could do it emotionally, he’s always been the better fighter. But I can keep up with him for a while, and I’ll have an edge. He won’t be expecting me. I can buy you time, and more importantly, I can keep him <b>far</b> away from the Oracle.”</p>
<p>Amicitia looked like he wanted to hit something, maybe Nyx, “You think she’ll be his target?”</p>
<p>Nyx shrugged, “His Majesty has you three, and an armiger. The Oracle only has her trident, and she’ll be distracted by Leviathan.”</p>
<p>Scientia hummed doubtfully, then stilled as Noctis held up a hand. Somnus’s descendent licked dry lips and declared, “Okay. You deal with your brother, we’ll … deal with everything else.” He paused, then his spine straightened and for a moment, he looked like a king in truth and not a grieving young man caught flatfooted by the world, “Protect Luna, no matter what. That’s an order.”</p>
<p>Nyx grinned despite himself as he pressed his his over his heart, “As you command, My King.”</p>
<p>They ended up exchanging phone numbers to keep in touch, and by the time Nyx got back to his room without anyone noticing, he could feel his hands shaking. Maybe it had been presumptuous, to act so confident that Ardyn would attack during the last Covenant, but it … felt right. It felt like something his brother would do, even without the Starscourge making him more aggressive —if it did make him more aggressive, it had with most of the victims Somnus had studied in a desperate attempt to find a cure, but Ardyn was no ordinary victim—. Now there was the pressure of his plan working, of his promise to keep Luna safe, of … everything.</p>
<p><em>“You’d … you’d really kill your own brother to protect Noct?”</em> The memory bit him like a knife blade and he shuddered as he stretched out on his bed. <em>No. Not that. Not anymore.</em> But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have to fight. That didn’t mean he might…</p>
<p>He shook his head to banish the thoughts. He had a plan, he had his boon, now he just needed a <b>chance</b>. <em>Please,</em> he thought at the stars he could not see, <em>just give me one chance.</em></p>
<p>It took three days for the awakening of Leviathan to be arranged, then several more after that before all evacuation preparations were in place. The First Secretary visited them once in a while, still steadily ignoring Gilgamesh’s hulking, unnatural form as she spoke with Luna over what was to come. In the end, Nyx slipped away to an empty plaza far away from the shrine to wait while Luna, with Gilgamesh at her side posing as a Messenger, temporarily surrendered to Niflheim. It made his skin crawl with the thought of it, the thought that Ardyn could attack right then, while Nyx wasn’t even <b>there</b>-.</p>
<p>
  
  <em>Gil is there. He won’t let anything happen. This is alright. It will … it will be alright.</em>
</p>
<p>Waiting felt like an agony. Luna’s speech was piped through loudspeakers throughout the city, and the gentle, serene confidence in her words helped ease the shaking of his hands a little bit. Then the speech was over and … all he could do was wait in silence. This plaza was far from the evacuation docks, far from the shrine as well. There were no people here and lots of space. Perfect for a fight.</p>
<p>Or a really, really tense talk.</p>
<p>Nyx crouched on a rooftop, years of boring watches in badly positioned bases making him at least a little numb to the jitters that came from too much quiet. He waited for what felt like forever…</p>
<p>Then magic surged like a storm wave of fury and the Tidemother rose. Nyx watched with a dry mouth, able to see the Astral even from halfway across the city, able to hear as she screamed words of fury beyond his understanding. He saw her head plunge for something, jolted to his feet when golden light —Luna’s magic, Luna’s <b>magic</b>— arced into the sky and sent the Leviathan reeling back. There was more screaming, magic so thick in the air Nyx could taste the sour tang of rotten seaweed and the salt of seawater on his tongue as the Tidemother turned her attention elsewhere. Nyx sensed another magic, young but deep and powerful, and knew the trial for the Covenant had begun.</p>
<p>Now all that was left was to see if Nyx was <b>right</b>.</p>
<p>Five minutes ticked by, then ten, then fifteen.</p>
<p>Then the sword Gilgamesh had buried point first in the plaza glowed bright with <em>ancient-raw-deathless</em> magic and Gilgamesh burst out of warp, one metal hand clamped tight around the back of a startled Ardyn’s neck. Gilgamesh didn’t wait for Ardyn to recover his feet or react, just warped away again, back to Luna’s side, thoroughly abusing his inability to get magic fatigue or physical strain from warping too far in order to carry out Nyx’s plan.</p>
<p>Nyx watched Ardyn stumble upright, teeth bared and something feral in his movements, and felt … paralyzed. He couldn’t move as Ardyn dropped the dagger he’d been holding —had been about to use on Luna, because Gilgamesh had been by Luna’s side this entire time, just waiting for this to happen— and swore viciously, looking for whoever had just warped him away from his target.</p>
<p>His brother was down there. His brother was <b>here</b>, had been here, alive, free, for <b>years</b> and Nyx had never known. Hadn’t <b>remembered</b>. Six. <b>Six</b>.</p>
<p>Ardyn looked horrible. There was a gauntness to his cheeks, an unkemptness to his appearance, to his very aura, that was tattered and <b>screaming</b> to Nyx’s senses in a way that made him wonder how Noctis could even stand to be near Ardyn —but he couldn’t, could he, all four had mentioned how off-putting the Chancellor was during that late night talk, all of them had brushed it off as just how he acted, not considering it was their instincts screaming over the Scourge—. <em>I did this to you,</em> he thought and Nyx felt like he was going to be sick.</p>
<p>Later. He could be sick later.</p>
<p>Hah. If there was a later.</p>
<p>Nyx jumped down from the rooftop, and Ardyn whirled to face him. He saw the uniform Nyx had put back on after so long skirting around the country in plainclothes, and his face relaxed, “Ahhh,” purred the man who was but wasn’t his brother, “a <b>Kingsglaive</b>.” He glanced around, “I had thought you all disbanded after Insomnia fell. Did the Messenger bring me here to face you, or was that one of your friends?” <em>Hallucinations. He knows his reality is warped, but he can’t bring himself to care anymore.</em> Yet another symptom Nyx had seen as Somnus a lifetime ago. “Well?” Cooed Ardyn in a tone that made Nyx’s skin crawl —a tone of pure poison, a tone that did not belong on his brother’s tongue—, “Shall we get started? I have an appointment with an attractive young lady and it wouldn’t do to be late.”</p>
<p>The mention of Luna made Nyx bristle, and his temper overrode his control of his tongue, “I think the line of Lucis Caelum has enough Oracle blood on their hands don’t you?”</p>
<p>Ardyn went utterly, predatorily still, “What.”</p>
<p>Nyx forced himself to meet eerie-bright yellow-gold eyes where there should have been blue, “Ardyn Lucis Caelum. That’s your name. Older brother of the Mystic.”</p>
<p>Golden eyes darkened, even as his expression twisted into one of mock delight, “Well, hasn’t <b>someone</b> done their research! I didn’t think there were any mentions of me left after the beloved <b>Founder King</b> wiped all mention of me from history.” <em>I didn’t do that, </em>Nyx bit back from saying, <em>I ordered your name kept in the history, not </em><b><em>destroyed</em></b><em>. That is one sin that isn’t mine.</em> It was Gilgamesh’s, Gilgamesh’s and Somnus’s eldest son, who had both agreed after Somnus’s death that it was bad for the morale of the kingdom for the current royal line to be potentially known as usurpers. But now was not the time.</p>
<p>Nyx took a slow step forward, then another. Ardyn watched him come with a too-bright look in his eyes and a liquid sort of movement as he spread his arms out like some kind of actor on stage, “So tell me, what is the name of this grand historian who has uncovered secrets the royal family have long buried, hmm? And what do you hope to achieve? Surely you didn’t have your friend drag me here just to brag about your knowledge.”</p>
<p>Another step, slow and loose and unthreatening, “My name is Nyx Ulric, and I have something to say to you.”</p>
<p>A scoff, disbelieving and insulted and amused all in one, “A <b>chat</b>? At a time like this?” Ardyn gestured toward the screaming form of Leviathan in the distance, and Nyx bit the inside of his cheek to keep from being distracted. He nodded and Ardyn <b>laughed</b>, a hollow, poisonous noise that was nothing like the laugh of the brother Nyx remembered —the brother Somnus had killed—, “Very well then, <b>Nyx Ulric</b>. What is it you have to say to me that cannot wait until my business is done?”</p>
<p>Nyx didn’t give himself a chance to hesitate, to wait, to <b>think</b>. He just reached out to the blade Gilgamesh had left in the plaza and <b>pulled</b>. He fell into warp without flinching, fell out of it and wasn’t surprised to register Ardyn already turning around and facing him with a snarl on his face-.</p>
<p>The knife blade slid home through thick fabric, nestling between ribs right up to the hilt. Arms wrapped around and gripped tight to clothes, and in the silence after the warp, a wet gasp rattled in the air, “I only have … one thing to say,” Nyx whispered.</p>
<p>In his arms, Ardyn was still. Too stunned to move. Nyx exhaled slowly past the copper on his tongue and slowly shifted one hand free of the back of Ardyn’s clothes, lifting it to gently clasp the back of his brother’s neck, and guide his brother’s head down the last few inches to rest their foreheads together. Ardyn’s skin felt unnaturally hot against his, like he was running a perpetual fever as the magic inside him roiled and fought an unending battle it could not win against the Starscourge. Nyx inhaled again past the pain in his side, opened his eyes and stared into shocked golden ones —perhaps it was unfair, to hinge everything on the reaction of a touch-starved man to a hug, but here they were, and he had one thing yet to do—, “I <b>love you</b>, Brother, and I’m so sorry.”</p>
<p>Nyx’s magic —Somnus’s magic, the magic of a traitor king two thousand years gone and a Galahdian with no Clan left to call his own— rose up from where he had been smothering it as deeply as possible and slammed into Ardyn. It surged right past the meager, instinctive defense Ardyn’s put up, his brother’s magic far too distracted with its centuries long battle against the Scourge to resist as Nyx reached inside…</p>
<p>And <b>pulled</b>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  
  <b>
    <em>“You have chosen a boon?”</em>
  </b>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Yes.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>“Speak then.”</em>
  </b>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Nyx opened his mouth and spoke, “Make me what my brother was. A healer, who healed by taking the illnesses of others as his own. His magic was part of your Blessing still, wasn’t it? Like a mix between Lucis Caelum and Oracle. His healing factor is what has kept his form human all this time. Maybe you never intended that kind of magic to manifest, but it did, and that means you can give it to me </em>
  <b>
    <em>intentionally</em>
  </b>
  <em>. So give me that magic. The magic to take the injury and sickness from another and into myself.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>“You … truly are a fool.”</em>
  </b>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Nyx laughed bitterly, “When have I ever not been fool? It was my foolishness that started this, let it be my foolishness that ends it.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  
  <em>He looked into too-old, inhuman blue eyes, “Let me become my brother’s healer.”</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>It was nothing like subtly practicing on Luna, discreetly seeping away her fatigue and pain from the Covenants and making them his own. Those had hurt, bone deep yes, but nothing worse then being magic exhausted from too many warps, or from spending too many weeks pulling double shifts on the front lines. Those were natural things, natural strains of a body using too much magic at once in order to get the attention of beings far too deep in slumber to feel anything less.</p>
<p>This … was nothing like that.</p>
<p>The Starscourge lunged for him, <b>eager</b> for a new host, a new chance to infect. It flooded into his veins, into his mouth and nose and lungs and bones. It tore him open from the inside with something that almost felt like glee, and it was all his new magic could do to keep it from ripping him apart in an instant. Ardyn’s magic reached out in the vacuum, trying instinctively to pull it <b>back</b>, to make it contained and his own again, but Nyx refused, battered through the pain and kept pulling, kept tearing away more and more Scourge and refusing to give it back.</p>
<p>There was screaming in his head. Or possibly outside. It might have been his own, or it might have been the Scourge. It was impossible to tell beneath the flood, the desperate scattered thoughts of <em>pull-keep-pulling-keep-pulling</em> and sheer, blinding, staggering, <b>pain</b>.</p>
<p>It hurt. It hurt so badly. It hurt more than anything in either lifetime, more than anything in <b>any</b> lifetime and oh <b>Astrals</b> how had his brother resisted this —more than this, the well of Scourge was so deep Nyx was already drowning with no sign of the bottom— for two thousand years? Something —someone?— knocked him to the ground. Nyx couldn’t feel the impact. No pain registered under the screaming in his head-heart-lungs-veins-bones. The infection he could <b>feel</b> crawling through him, trying to warp him as his magic desperately fought back. <em>Please, please make it stop. </em>He begged, out loud or inside he didn’t know and couldn’t care because he was boiling, he was rotting from the inside out and he couldn’t <b>breathe</b>-.</p>
<p>Out of the corner of his eye, someone was writhing on the ground next to him, in just as much pain but <b>glowing</b> with gold magic, magic now freed, now given an <b>advantage</b> against an enemy two thousand years barely held at bay. Magic grew stronger with age and use, and two thousand years was a very long time. All it took was the scales tipping, even a little bit-.</p>
<p>Somewhere beneath the agony, Nyx thought he heard someone laughing in victorious, hysterical glee.</p>
<p>As he forced his head to turn and watch his brother vomit out the last of the Scourge from his body, Nyx thought that someone might have been him.</p>
<p>He wasn’t sure how much time passed between that revelation and when he next became aware of himself. But eventually, the <em>rotting-burning-tearing</em> of the Scourge settled to something he could think past. It felt like being sick. Everything ached, his head was spinning just squinting up at the rain, and there was a nausea in his stomach that made him want to throw up except that would require moving onto his side or front and moving felt like a terrible idea. He could feel his magic burning fever hot under his skin, constantly fighting the Scourge, leaving barely scraps for him to use for anything else. It was exhausting and painful and he hated it. But he remembered golden magic burning bright as the sun, given the advantage at last in an endless war for his brother’s soul, and even now he couldn’t find it in himself to regret it.</p>
<p>Something moved in the corner of his vision, and then Ardyn was looming over him, that awful hat he’d been wearing gone, his hair a mess and his face gaunt…</p>
<p>His eyes were blue.</p>
<p>Nyx started laughing until he tasted blood and Scourge all mixed together, “Knew … it would work.”</p>
<p>Ardyn’s face twisted and his hands grabbed the front of Nyx’s coat, yanking him partially up in a way that made his head spin as Ardyn hissed with wild eyes, “What did you do? You utter- you mad, crazy <b>fool</b>! <b>What did you do</b>?”</p>
<p>“What you did,” Nyx wheezed, “for hundreds of people. <b>Our</b> people. I couldn’t cure you. I looked for years and years an’ … an’ nothing worked. Oracle magic would take too long … sunlight would kill you. But you already had magic to purify the Scourge. Magic gets stronger with age … an’ I knew … I knew your magic just needed a chance. An advantage. Then it would cure you for me.”</p>
<p>Ardyn’s expression had gone flat as he talked, wide blue eyes the only sign of expression. The grip on his coat loosened, then shifted. Nyx blinked in fuzzy confusion when Ardyn ... cradled him in his arms. Braced Nyx’s head against his bicep, wrapped the other arm tight around Nyx’s waist to support him —faltered as he did, looked down with a wild expression at the knife in Nyx’s ribs that Nyx couldn’t feel anymore beneath the Scourge—. Ardyn stared at Nyx’s face, into his eyes with an expression Nyx couldn’t read, like he was looking for something.</p>
<p>Then, “Somnus?”</p>
<p>The question was cracked, fragile as glass and Nyx hummed. Too sick and in pain and smug to care that he was going to get stabbed again for answering honestly, “I Walked Twice. Didn’t remember … anything. Knew something was missing but not…” Nyx wiggled his fingers a bit, letting what tiny shreds of magic he had that wasn’t occupied with fighting the Scourge drift in blue shards among the raindrops, “what. Not until,” another coughing fit caught him, tore at him and this time he tasted more Scourge then blood on his tongue as he weakly spat it out onto the stones , “I put on the Ring,” he finished weakly. “Then I remembered everything.”</p>
<p>He expected the anger to come now. The fury, the screaming. The very justified stabbing. Instead, Ardyn just looked even more fragile somehow, “You… you remember. Everything?”</p>
<p>“Yes.” Nyx inhaled as carefully as he dared, then managed to reach a hand up and gingerly touch Ardyn’s cheek. He was careful not to look at his hand, dead white and laced with purple veins, fingernails blackening almost like claws —Ardyn had had years to build up to his level of infection, Nyx had taken on as much as he could in one go. He was human still … but not for too long. The Scourge was winning a slow fight of attrition that started with his fingertips and he didn’t want to think about what would come next—, “Your eyes are blue. Fits you much better … than yellow.”</p>
<p>“Somnus…” Ardyn raised a hand to cup Nyx’s fingers and it took a few confused blinks to realize some of the rain hitting his face tasted like salt. Ardyn was … crying? Why? Nyx had done nothing as Somnus to warrant tears. This wasn’t … this was the best revenge Ardyn could have ever had. The most <b>justified</b> revenge. He was cured of the Scourge, the Accursed was gone and Ardyn was left and Nyx … Nyx didn’t matter. Not in the grand scheme of things. He’d seen it unfold in his dreams since the boon. The trick, the pulling, the chance for his brother to free himself. Those dreams always, always ended with either Ardyn walking away and leaving him to rot, or finishing him off, and Nyx would never have blamed him. What was abandonment or a sword to two thousand years of torment? He had only hoped that, without the Scourge to drive him and with revenge wrought on the source of his pain, his brother would find it in himself to leave Luna and Noctis alone. Or if he did not, at least he was not immortal. They would stand a chance with Gilgamesh’s help to drive him off —though he hoped it wouldn’t come to that, prayed it wouldn’t every night—.</p>
<p>So why was Ardyn crying over him? It made no sense, it was so out of his expectations it felt like it wasn’t … “Oh.” Nyx let his hand relax and closed his eyes, “They start that soon … huh?”</p>
<p>The hand holding his —not holding his, not really there—, tightened, “What starts, what- Somnus, what were you <b>thinking</b>?”</p>
<p>“The hallucinations,” he murmured more to himself than the vision of the brother he had missed, “the Scourge always causes them. Makes people see what they want and then twists it until they go mad. I studied it … before. Didn’t know they started … this fast though.” Nyx closed his eyes tiredly, feeling every twinge and ache, every rasp of breath in his lungs, “I wish he’d stuck around, even if it was to … finish me off. I … had some things to tell him.”</p>
<p>The hands that he was only imagining went white knuckled and the Ardyn he was dreaming up blinked rapidly, face shifting between fury and anguish —just more proof this was the beginning of a hallucination, after everything he’d done, everything he’d sentenced Ardyn to, surely his brother would feel nothing but glee for his second demise—, “If … if he was here,” rasped the blue-eyed Ardyn, “what would you say?”</p>
<p>“Doesn’t matter now. You’re just a hallucination, and he isn’t here to listen.”</p>
<p>“I’m <b>not</b>-,” snapped the false Ardyn, something glass brittle in his voice before it softened, “Just … indulge me. Please.”</p>
<p>…There was no harm in it. Not now. So Nyx spoke. Painful and slow, with many pauses for breath that rattled a little more in his chest each time —with coughs that tasted more and more like Scourge—, he spoke. He said he was sorry. He said he loved his brother. He whispered of what had come after Ardyn’s imprisonment, how the Astrals had come and <b>shown</b> him what he had done. Not that it mattered. He should never have turned on kin in the first place —a lesson learned too late as Somnus, a belief woven into his soul as Nyx—. He told the hallucination holding him about how he had searched. For years and years. Delved into magic, into medicine, into the study of the Scourge, all in desperate hope … only to find nothing. Nothing of that era could hope to heal his brother. They called him the Mystic for his knowledge, but he called himself a failure because none of it could fix what mattered most.</p>
<p>He whispered with a cracking voice that he’d tried- he’d tried to come. To free Ardyn, to apologize. But the Draconian had sealed the doors and no mortal man could even reach the island. Or at least … Somnus couldn’t reach the island, and neither could any he sent to try on his behalf. He whispered that he had told his children stories after that. Of his sins, hidden away and borne by another, of the monster that came from greed. They’d been kids at the time, so he hadn’t told them all the bloody facts, but instead made it a story, a lesson, for them to memorize and teach their own children. A story of the fallen king and the monster named Adagium, who sought to overthrow the true king out of blind jealousy and rage.</p>
<p>He had to stop at that point and listen to the hallucination laugh himself sick in a broken, fractured way that spoke of pain and anger. He expected it to finally turn on him, for the dream to warp and become the madness inducing horrors the Scourge created in a tainted mind. Instead, Ardyn pressed his forehead to Nyx’s, “I should <b>hate</b> you,” he whispered, “and call you a <b>liar</b>.”</p>
<p>“I always was a terrible liar,” he retorted, “could never keep a straight-.” Pain. Pain in his chest and lungs, driving him into a coughing frenzy that made his ribs creak and the world swim. His magic surged, struggling against the Scourge that had just breached it’s banks, and when he whimpered from the pain of it, he dully registered that the sound was inhuman. Pain spread from his chest to his jaw and he pressed his face into the fabric of not-Ardyn’s shoulder and screamed, high and feral and unnatural at the feel of his teeth getting longer, sharper.</p>
<p>When the agony passed, the world was fuzzy and grey as he went limp beneath the rain. His world was shaking, he didn’t know why. He was so tired. He felt so sick and exhausted. There was a kernel in his chest that begged for anger, for screaming wrath and mindless hunger.</p>
<p>Nyx did nothing instead. There was nothing to do but shiver on the ground, hyper-aware of the shape of his teeth, of the colors seeping out of the world, of the feel of his nails —claws-claws-claws— scraping the stone beneath his hand as his fingers convulsively flexed.</p>
<p>“-happening? Somnus, Somnus answer me!”</p>
<p>Nyx laughed a little at the not-Ardyn’s concern, “My brother … had years … to build up to this level of infection. I’ve had … a few months … tops … to practice this magic at all. Surprised I lasted … this long.”</p>
<p>Blue eyes were wide, and the gaunt face above his lost the last of its color, “You knew. You knew this would-. You <b>planned-</b>. Just to-. You utter suicidal <b>insane idiot of a little brother</b>! <b>Why would you do this to yourself</b>?”</p>
<p>His view was getting narrow, the pain was creeping back. Eating up his veins toward his heart. He lifted a hand and stared at the black scales on his fingertips, the long hooked claws that used to be nails. Fitting. A monster for a monster. <em>Lib is gonna be </em><b><em>so</em></b><em> mad.</em> So was Luna … but he was trying not to think about that, “My brother lived with this … two thousand years. If I have to die from it … in an hour … to set him free … then it’s a price worth paying. Hearth and Home … and all that.” And for all Captain had apparently meant something very different with the phrase, it was still one close to his heart. Hearth had always been where he stayed. Insomnia, Lucis, the isles of Galahd he had wanted so badly to free. But home…</p>
<p>Home for any Galahdian was <b>family</b>. Putting on the Ring hadn’t changed that.</p>
<p>He wondered suddenly if anyone would think to take word to Libertus that he was gone.</p>
<p>He wondered if they would know at all. He was just lying here after all. And since no one had stabbed him … Ardyn had left. No one was here. Gil couldn’t come back without Luna. He had promised. It would take time to navigate the wreckage here on foot since Luna couldn’t safely be warped that far, and that was if the fight for the Covenant was even over yet. By the time anyone got here, there was every chance he’d be fully daemonified and withered away under the rainy sunlight. To them he would just- disappear without a trace. A glaive who made a promise and never came back just like so many others. Not even a body left to bury.</p>
<p>His hand went limp without his consent and he stared dully at it, white and purple and blackened scales against grey stone. Astrals he was so tired. He couldn’t concentrate anymore. Not on his words, not on his hallucination, not on the faint, muffled roar of someone yelling for the past … he didn’t know how long. Not even on the way he was shaking —being shaken? Couldn’t be, no one was there. He was alone, the last of his Clan, the only glaive in Altissia, and no one was coming in time—. Maybe … he could sleep through it? He’d take unconsciousness over the agony of transforming. Then he’d wake up … and maybe, if he was lucky just once in his life, he’d be with his Clan again. He’d get to see his <em>mamaí</em>, and his <em>daidí</em>. He’d get to grumble as <em>Mhamó</em> tugged on his braid and cooed about how big he’d grown.</p>
<p>…He’d get to hug Selene and tell her how much he’d missed her.</p>
<p>Ardyn would have liked Selene. They would have gotten along like twins despite their age difference. All jokes and smiles and drama and unshakable stubborn. Astrals, they would have driven him grey before he was thirty and he would have loved every second of it.</p>
<p>He blinked sluggishly, unsure when his eyes had closed the first time, then decided it wasn’t worth the effort and let them fall shut again, looking for the peace of darkness to escape the pain eating through his being.</p>
<p>Somewhere in between being aware of the cold and the rain and drifting down into the dark, he thought he heard someone familiar —someone loved, someone lost, someone he couldn’t grasp the name of anymore— screaming his old name.</p>
<p>
  
  <em>“-mnus! </em>
  <b>
    <em>Somnus</em>
  </b>
  <em>!”</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>If anyone bothered to ask him, the jungle after a rain was the <b>perfect</b> time to play. Nyx giggled as he leaped from root to root to rock, trying not to touch the muddy ground and whooping for adrenaline when the rain-slicked wood and stone threatened to send him tumbling onto his tail. Dappled light cut through the canopy leaves, and Nyx stopped in a patch of it to tilt his head to the breeze and breathe in the smells of the jungle. Earth and leaf loam and bark and deadly pretty flowers that smelled good to attract unwary bugs and small things.</p>
<p>He shook his head with a laugh and kept running, jumping from place to place, slipping and sliding and getting muddy and not caring a wit. The air was clear, the breeze was cool, and he could faintly hear the dull roar of the ocean beating against the cliffside in the distance. Tidemother’s heartbeat, keeping him orientated as he ducked and wove deeper and deeper into the jungle. It was good to be out here, to clear his head from…</p>
<p>What had he been upset about?</p>
<p>Nyx paused, looked thoughtfully at the jungle, like it could tell him. It didn’t, and Nyx decided he didn’t care. It had probably just been a stupid nightmare again. Which was annoying. Nyx was <b>eight</b> already, he could handle a stupid nightmare. Didn’t even need to go wake up his <em>mamaí</em> or <em>daidí</em> about it anymore. Most of the time anyway.</p>
<p>Nyx spun around a tree trunk a few times, running his hand along the creepers encircling it, then called, “Lib, come on! Tree race! I dare you to reach the top!” He paused when silence was his only answer. Looked around in confusion, “Lib?” There was still no answer, and Nyx ignored the prickling along his spine in favor of propping hands on hips and calling, “Not fair, Lib! You can’t play hide and seek without telling anyone first!” Still nothing. Not a whisper or a rustle or a giggle. Nyx chewed his lip, then taunted at the underbrush, “C’mon Lib, I’m starting to think <b>you’re</b> the Ulric around here!”</p>
<p>Nothing.</p>
<p>Now Nyx couldn’t ignore the unease. Lib was super proud of being an Ostium, and was more than willing to yell at kids twice his size if they called him an Ulric. Or anything that wasn’t an Ostium really. “Lib?”</p>
<p>“He’s not here yet. Won’t be for a good long while, I hope.”</p>
<p>Nyx whirled, all lean, gangly eighteen year old limbs and racing heart, hunting shoes slipping a little on the beach’s shifting sprawl of sand, “Who-?” Bright blue eyes and wavy black hair, so much thicker than his, all done up in a braided crown to keep it out of her way. She smiled at him, a toothy expression that crinkled her eyes and promised mischief, and Nyx choked on his tears, “<b>Selene</b>.”</p>
<p>She let him snatch her up and spin her around, held onto him as Nyx stumbled and fell onto his back in the sand, heedless of the red staining the golden grains, the too-slow, too-distant rumble of thunder when the churning clouds were right overhead. He ignored the empty boats, ramps down in the sand, still waiting for the panicked crowds that had once flooded across the beach, desperate to escape the bullets and the fire and the pillars of smoke Nyx could see out of the corner of his eye but not smell, like they were only paint on canvas.</p>
<p>“Selene,” he choked, “my Little Moon. Six- <b>Six</b> I- I missed you <b>so much</b>.”</p>
<p>She clung to him just as tightly, her face half buried in his shoulder, “I missed you too.” She shifted to scowl at him, “But that doesn’t mean I want to see you this soon, you <b>idiot</b>. You’re lucky Mhamó didn’t decide to come kick you right into the water. It would be what you deserve!”</p>
<p>Nyx stared at her, dazed and uncomprehending, “I … you died. Selene I don’t … you <b>died</b>.”</p>
<p>“I did.”</p>
<p>Nyx swallowed and looked around at the bloody, empty beach, the storm clouds overhead and the rain falling through the air without touching the ground. Like a painting, a picture, a snapshot of the worst moment in his life, “I … died too? The Nifs … they shot me.” He exhaled shakily, “Lib is gonna be so upset. I- he lost us both and-.”</p>
<p>“Nyx.” He looked down, Selene stared up at him solemnly from where he was still holding her in a vise, “You weren’t shot by the Nifs.” Nyx scowled in confusion and she sighed, “Big dummy. Too stubborn to know when to quit, too thick headed to remember once something finally gets rattled loose of that skull of yours.” She pushed his shoulders and he reluctantly let her sit up. It took a bit of work to sit up himself without letting her go, but somehow they managed to sit side by side on the sand, his arm wrapped tight around his little sister’s waist, “You aren’t supposed to be here,” she announced softly.</p>
<p>“…I don’t understand.”</p>
<p>His little sister rolled her eyes, but there was still a smile tugging on her lips, “Isn’t <b>that</b> a surprise.”</p>
<p>“Hey!”</p>
<p>Her expression sobered, “You’re very brave, Nyx. You’re a good chief. But you care about your life too little. There are people who’d miss you, you know? People counting on you to come back.”</p>
<p>Nyx stared at the too-still waves and wracked his brain, “…Who?” he whispered softly, “Lib still has his Clan, he could survive losing me. And we were … we were the last Ulrics.”</p>
<p>She swatted his arm, “Lib would go do something <b>nuts</b> if he lost you and we both know it. Like- like becoming Captain of the Kingsglaive or something.”</p>
<p>“Kingsglaive?”</p>
<p>Selene huffed, “There’s no time for me to lead you around to the answer, Nyx. You have somewhere else to be, so you need to <b>remember</b>.”</p>
<p>“Remember <b>what</b>?” Nyx asked in exasperation, “Selene, you <b>died</b>. The beach was packed- where else would I have died?”</p>
<p>“In Insomnia, though by some miracle you didn’t,” rumbled a deep, tired voice and Nyx was on his feet in an instant, shoving Selene behind him with one hand as he reached for his kukri with the other, cursing as he tried to catch his balance on the building rubble in the early dawn light.</p>
<p>“Traitor!” He hissed, agony ripping open his heart at the mere thought of it, the memory of a sword going through the king’s chest and the later realization that it had been <b>Captain’s blade-</b>.</p>
<p>Titus watched him with an expression that was … oddly sad, “Stand down, Nyx. Our fight is over.”</p>
<p>“Then why are you here?”</p>
<p>“To help you remember.” Titus’s lips twitched in that dry, muted way that meant he wanted to laugh but didn’t find the situation appropriate, “And here I thought it would take more than a little head cold to bring you down. You survived the Fall, you survived fighting me.” Titus tipped his head toward Nyx’s right hand, “You survived putting on the Ring.”</p>
<p>Nyx looked down at his hand, heart in his throat, glimpsed the royal Ring on his finger and jolted as the world <b>cracked</b> around him, like a piece of clay put under too much stress, “I don’t-. I don’t understand. I don’t remember!”</p>
<p>“Then think fast, Nyx,” Titus said dryly, “because this won’t last for much longer.”</p>
<p>“What won’t last? Why are you talking to me? What are you and Selene <b>talking about</b>? Just give me a straight answer!”</p>
<p>“We aren’t the ones who need to remember, Nyx,” whispered Selene at his back, her little hands on the sleeve of his uniform, “you do, and only you can do it, because they’re <b>your</b> missing memories. You can do this, Nyx. You just need to <b>think</b>. What happened after you put on the Ring?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know!”</p>
<p>Titus’s unimpressed expression, the one he used to hide concern —but had he really? Had he really cared when he was betraying them all?— grew stronger, “Stop yelling, Kingsglaive, and <b>focus</b>. That’s an order.”</p>
<p>It shouldn’t have still been instinct to listen to the traitor, but it was, and Nyx glared at the Ring as he tried to remember. He remembered the Burning of Galahd, he remembered Insomnia falling, he remembered fighting Titus, but there was gap. A chasm between seeing Titus as a traitor and fighting him, a gap with the Ring involved. Nyx scowled harder, tried to ignore the cracking of the world around them. Nyx had put on the Ring and then he had…</p>
<p>Nyx had…</p>
<p>He-</p>
<p><b>Somnus</b> had-.</p>
<p>Remembered.</p>
<p>Nyx who was Somnus who was Mystic who was Nyx exhaled slowly, “Aera. <b>Brother</b>.”</p>
<p>“Well done.” The world stabilized. Tall golden grass licked his knees, tickled his bare arms and whispered against the silk of his robe as he looked up and saw Aera smiling back at him from beneath her favorite tree, “I thought you would remember in time.”</p>
<p>“Aera-,” He started, stopped in revulsion and surprise, because that was not his voice. That was his <b>old</b> voice. Somnus’s voice and it … it sounded wrong. That wasn’t his voice anymore. He swallowed and pushed on past the eerie sensation, past the prickling sense of Selene and Captain on either side, “Am I here to be punished?”</p>
<p>Aera reached out and took his hand. Her blue eyes reminded him of someone else now, not the other way around, and the comparison … <b>hurt</b>, deep in his heart —this was how Ardyn had felt about her, this was why Ardyn had <b>screamed</b> when the blade had cut her open—, “Do you remember me as the type to punish those who truly regret?”</p>
<p>Somnus- Nyx- licked his lips and found them still too dry, “You would be within your right. I betrayed you. I betrayed <b>him</b>. I’m a Kinslayer. It’s the least I deserve.”</p>
<p>Aera’s blue eyes darkened with sadness, like he had said something that made her heart hurt, “Oh, Somnus. Your past is important, and it marks you, but it does not condemn you.” Her other hand came up to clasp around his, her touch was so gentle he could have cried, “Don’t you remember? All who repent may yet find the Light.” She gently pulled his hand to press it against her heart, “You have done more than any would have asked of you. You have Walked Twice and remembered, you stood before the Draconian and claimed Ardyn as kin once more, you have protected your Chosen King, you have taken good care of Lunafreya … and you have given Ardyn back his light.”</p>
<p>Nyx closed his eyes, felt a tear tremble free of his eyelashes, “So it worked then?”</p>
<p>“Listen for yourself.” Aera tugged him on. First one step, then another.</p>
<p>Then he was standing on the rocky, ruined shores of Angelgard, with storm clouds overhead and his back to the dungeon door. Far across the water he could see the shoreline of Lucis and on the wind…</p>
<p>He could hear voices.</p>
<p>“Is he going to be okay?” The young king, Noctis, his monarch, his descendent, his kin. He sounded exhausted and worried, helpless in a way Nyx knew intimately.</p>
<p>“You’ve survived worse than this, you <b>idiot</b>,” growled Gilgamesh, his tone hollow from his immortal state, but still strong, still familiar, still a mix of worry and exasperation that he had known intimately from their campaigns, “so don’t you <b>dare</b> die on me again. Not from this.”</p>
<p>“Nyx, my Nyx, please … if you can hear me, if you are still in there … please wake up.” He jolted at the whisper of Luna’s voice, wavering and quiet, like she had no strength left to speak loud and firm. Not a physical weakness … an emotional one. She sounded tired. She sounded lost.</p>
<p>For a moment the wind and the waves carried nothing else. And then…</p>
<p>“You always did like sleep a little too much, Little Brother Mine, especially when it helped you avoid confrontations.”</p>
<p>Nyx’s spine straightened, and the name was leaving his tongue before he could think, “Ardyn?”</p>
<p>“I told you,” Selene murmured as she tucked herself against his side, “there are people who would miss you. Not just Lib, but them too. You mean a lot to them. They’re Clan after all.”</p>
<p>Nyx looked down at his hands and saw deathly white skin and purple veins, hooked claws and black scales. He didn’t feel the pain of it … but the sight was enough to spark a shudder, “But I…”</p>
<p>“Am not dead,” corrected Aera softly, “Ardyn carried you to the Oracle and begged for her aid. Between her healing and Ardyn’s own magic, they drew the Scourge from your body and purified it before it could taint his. You’ve been asleep ever since, and if you do not hurry, you won’t be able to wake up.” <em>Do I deserve to wake up?</em> He thought of asking.</p>
<p>A calloused hand clapped his shoulder, Nyx looked up to see Captain staring stoically at the horizon, but with a telltale pinch in his forehead, “A life for a life, a sickness for a sickness. Even by the Old Laws, you paid your debts. Now stop moping and <b>get back out there</b>, Glaive.”</p>
<p>It was instinct to straighten and salute, it was instinct to smile and tease, “Aw, so nice to know you care, Captain.” Then he faltered.</p>
<p>Titus dropped his gaze from the horizon to meet Nyx’s eyes, “I do care. I always did. I just forgot what I was supposed to be caring about. But I don’t think that’s going to be a problem for you this time around. For Hearth and Home, Nyx Ulric.”</p>
<p>“For Hearth and Home,” Nyx echoed, and <b>his</b> meaning of the phrase, not Captain’s, echoed between them like a bell, clear and understood and agreed upon.</p>
<p>Titus smiled, just a curl of one corner of his mouth, but it made Nyx grin back, “And don’t forget it, Glaive.”</p>
<p>Selene hugged his waist, fitting perfectly beneath his arm as she hummed, “We’ll be waiting for you, when it’s <b>really</b> your time to come home, okay? But you better make sure it’s a long time. I’ve got a <b>ton</b> of pranks to set up and I need all the time I can get.”</p>
<p>Nyx laughed, a watery sound, and kissed the crown of his sister’s head, “Anything for you, Little Moon.”</p>
<p>Nyx stilled when Aera’s hands rested on his back, not pushing, just … resting. Encouraging. “Walk tall, Nyx Ulric, he who was once Somnus and is now the Temerarious.”</p>
<p>“…I’ll try.”</p>
<p>“That will be enough.” She hesitated, “And … when you get there … will you tell him something? From me?”</p>
<p>Nyx nodded, unable to do anything else, and Aera whispered in his ear, “Tell him I’ll be waiting for him. That I’ll be waiting for as long as he needs.”</p>
<p>Nyx swallowed the feeling of glass in his throat and dipped his head again, “I’ll … tell him.” <em>If he listens to me.</em></p>
<p>“Then what are you waiting for, Kingsglaive?” Titus asked gruffly, “Get going, and don’t let me catch you looking back.”</p>
<p>Nyx laughed against his will, then slowly started walking. Down the winding path to the shoreline, then through the golden field past Aera’s tree. He strode down the ruined streets of Insomnia and didn’t flinch as he wandered across bloody sand. He brushed his fingers against the rain-soaked tree trunks and stopped on the edge of the rainy plaza in Altissia. He took a deep breath one more time, listening to Aera and Titus and Selene quipping and laughing faintly in the distance behind him, cradling their voices in his heart. Then he stepped forward, and let the stones under his feet crumble away into darkness.</p>
<p>He didn’t once look back.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Nyx blinked awake to bright sunshine. It streamed through the windows dotting the room, warming his skin without burning him to nothing, and under his body he could feel a sinfully soft bed the likes of which he hadn’t felt since … well. Since he’d been Somnus, actually. His bed in Galahd had been comfortable, but this was like floating on a cloud rather than lying on an actual object, and all his beds since the Burning had been more along the lines of couches with delusions of grandeur. Though he supposed the bed he’d been given when he and Luna were taken into the protective custody of Accordo would also count as being this soft…</p>
<p>He tentatively twitched his fingers, not daring to look at anything but the ceiling above his head yet, dared to breathe a sigh of relief when his fingers slid smoothly across the silk. No claws to catch and tear on the fabric. He inhaled as deeply as he could and felt no catch or burn in his lungs. Ran a tongue over his teeth and lips and tasted no sign of the Scourge. He was … awake.</p>
<p>He was alive.</p>
<p>Selene, Titus, and Aera … had been telling the truth?</p>
<p>So then … where was he?</p>
<p>He shifted slowly, the familiar ache that came from first a hard fight and then not moving for several days —usually because he’d been unconscious in a hospital— trying to keep him from sitting up. He did anyway, leaned against the headboard and looked around at what appeared to be an actual <b>suite</b>. Not as grand as the one given to Luna, but still. A suite. Far better than the back alley or even coffin he’d still be half expecting in the moments after waking up.</p>
<p>He didn’t see anyone around. No. No wait … he did.</p>
<p>In a plush armchair on his left, the piece of furniture having obviously been dragged to his bedside from the other room … was Ardyn. It was <b>Ardyn</b>. His brother. Fast asleep in the chair, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle, head lolling back against the back of the armchair, one arm on an armrest, the other flopped in his lap at an angle that made Nyx think Ardyn had originally fallen asleep with his chin on his hand, only for his arm to relax and fall into his lap after he dozed off.</p>
<p>Ardyn was capable of <b>sleeping</b> again. Scourge victims lost that ability in the later stages. Too much pain and madness in their veins to let them actually rest, for all they could pretend. Nyx inhaled as quietly as he could and blinked back tears as he looked his brother over.</p>
<p>Ardyn had abandoned the truly ridiculous amount of layers he’d been wearing as the Chancellor, dressed now in only in slacks, a long sleeved pinstripe button-up, and a sleeveless jacket that looked fine to Nyx but he knew would have made any Lazarus want to strangle someone —something about conflicting patterns and color schemes, though Nyx had never understood the issue—. The ugly hat he was always wearing in the newspapers sat innocently on a nearby nightstand. His skin was pale from a lack of sunshine, but not the dead white of someone infected, and his face was turned unconsciously toward the sunlight without a hint of pain. There were lines of exhaustion on his brother’s face, but not ones of pain anymore, and while his brother looked … wearier, even in sleep, he didn’t seem to have aged a day since that awful moment Somnus betrayed him.</p>
<p>Nyx swallowed with a throat so dry the motion hurt, and wondered if he was really awake or if he was hallucinating. If he was still infected and the world was going to shatter into a nightmare at any moment.</p>
<p>He thought of the warmth of Aera’s hands on his back, the feel of his little sister tucked against his side and Captain’s firm grip on his shoulder and couldn’t bring himself to believe that <b>they</b> had been a hallucination. That had been real. They had been real. And they wouldn’t lie to him. Even so … even so. He wanted- he <b>needed</b> to get a look at himself, to either confirm or banish the awful memories of dead white skin and black scales and purple veins. He didn’t dare look down at his hands. Not yet.</p>
<p>There had to be a bathroom in this suite. He’d get a drink of water at the same time as checking on himself in a mirror. That would work.</p>
<p>Flipping the covers back while stubbornly not looking down, Nyx shifted to sit on the side of the bed, flinched from surprise at the feel of plush carpet rather than the cold floor he’d expected, then shook his head and pushed himself up. The world tilted a bit, but after a moment of grimly holding still, it passed and Nyx crept quietly past his sleeping brother to find the bathroom. It was in the door just past the plush sitting room, and he wiggled his toes on the cool linoleum and marveled mentally at the lack of sound —no claws to click across tile, not like he’d been braced for—. His eyes dropped to the sink and he busied himself getting a drink in one of the little hotel plastic cups. Only then did he brace himself and reach out to flip on the bathroom light. He squinted past the colored spots the sudden artificial light caused, then took a deep breath and looked up into the mirror.</p>
<p>His eyes were gold.</p>
<p>He dropped his gaze again and felt sick. Stared at his human hands and tried to use them to ground himself. His eyes caught on his left hand and he swallowed hard as he traced the new scar pattern on it. It looked like … burn scars maybe. Or like his hand and arm had been pottery that had shattered and then put back together with the cracks still visible. They traced up his arm from the finger of his hand —the finger he had put the Ring on—, wound up the back of his hand and wrist, up his forearm until the branching webs disappeared beneath the sleeve of the t-shirt someone had put him in. It was … interesting. A shaky poke proved the scars didn’t hurt, and his fingers didn’t hesitate to wiggle on command. They were practically cosmetic, for now at least. He had no doubt they would ache something fierce in the cold and the rain.</p>
<p>He wondered how far up his arm they went. Did they go all the way to his torso?</p>
<p>With that thought in mind and the memory of his eyes being <b>firmly</b> ignored, he peeled off his shirt and craned his head to look. The scars definitely went all the way up his arm, winding and branching like interconnected lightning bolts up his shoulder, stretching toward his collarbone and neck before he lost sight of them. If he wanted to see the full damage, he’d have to look in the mirror.</p>
<p>He didn’t want to look in the mirror.</p>
<p><em>Nyx Ulric,</em> he growled mentally,<em> you haven’t been a coward your entire life and you aren’t going to start now.</em> He flexed his fingers, longing for his kukri but not daring to summon them lest he wake up Ardyn, then forced his gaze back up to the mirror. The scars went up his arm and shoulder, across his collarbone and then up his neck like little white tree branches, winding their way up his jawline and his cheek to rest on his left cheekbone and temple, right next to … his eyes.</p>
<p><b>His yellow eyes</b>-. He snapped them shut and breathed. Opened them again and stared himself down with shaking hands. It took several moments of blank, stubborn staring before he registered a difference between his eyes and the ones in his nightmares —the ones Ardyn had possessed until Nyx helped him purify himself—. Ardyn’s eyes had been a sickly shade of gold that leaned more toward acidic yellow, burning with hate and fever. Nyx’s eyes … looked like liquid gold in shade, vibrant and glittering, but he saw no madness in his own eyes. No fever or poisonous hate. Just … himself. His own gaze, his own fear. He bit his lip, forced himself to stop before he could taste blood.</p>
<p>He wanted his blue eyes back. He wasn’t supposed to have gold eyes. He’d <b>always</b> had blue eyes. Always. In both lifetimes, throughout all of his memory, his eyes had been blue and now they weren’t and it … it hurt a lot more than he ever would have thought it would. <em>It’s just a color,</em> he told himself. Except it wasn’t, because his eyes had <b>changed color</b> and what if that meant he was still infected somehow, what if…?</p>
<p>A loud crash interrupted his thoughts and he jolted, magic humming defensively under his skin —ready to answer his every command, unburdened by fighting the Scourge and that was good, if he could feel that, if he could <b>feel</b> the lack of infection maybe his eyes would stop being so terrifying—. He whirled toward the sound and stumbled his way out of the bathroom, half-expecting to see some kind of attacker. Another loud thud came from the direction of the bedroom and this time he heard Ardyn call out in a tone of pure panic, “Somnus? Somnus! Somnus, <b>answer me</b>!”</p>
<p>Confusion kept him silent despite himself and he could only stare as Ardyn <b>erupted</b> from the bedroom, his magic swirling around him like a whirlpool of <em>worry-worry-panic-fear-love-worry</em>, his red-violet hair a flyaway mess and his clothes rumpled, like he had fallen out of his chair in panic upon waking up and not finding Nyx in the bed. Ardyn stopped short in the doorway to the living room, eyes wild as he spotted Nyx leaning warily against the bathroom doorframe, shirtless and skittish-looking but whole. Nyx watched in a mix of confusion and disbelief and aching <b>hope</b> as his brother seemed to deflate, tension rushing out of his frame and blue, blue eyes going bright with unshed tears, “You <b>idiot</b>,” Ardyn breathed, “getting up and wandering off-. You should have <b>woken me</b>. <b>Said something</b>!”</p>
<p>Nyx tried to find words, but nothing came. So he just … stared. Ardyn seemed to find his silence alarming, or maybe it was the brittle look in his —gold now— eyes, because his brother began pacing slowly toward him like one would a deadly, frightened animal, “Somnus? Are you alright?”</p>
<p>Nyx blinked once, blinked twice, opened his mouth and said the stupidest of all the options he had, “Why am I alive?”</p>
<p>Ardyn’s jaw went so tight Nyx could see the muscles in his brother’s neck jump and a part of him braced for a —well-deserved— strike of some kind. Maybe a knife if reality decided to play into Nyx’s expectations, “So. You really <b>didn’t</b> intend to survive.”</p>
<p>Nyx shrugged, the morbid humor of a man who had Walked Twice and a Kingsglaive who had survived far longer than he should have on the field rising up past his numb surprise, “Any day could be my last. That one just seemed a little more likely than most to be it.”</p>
<p>Ardyn closed his eyes and breathed pointedly several times before opening his eyes, “You … I don’t even know what to <b>say</b> to you.”</p>
<p>Nyx hummed, and since his brain to mouth filter had been well and truly dead long before he was even born the second time around, he offered, “Could just stab me and have done.”</p>
<p>Ardyn reared back as if Nyx had just slapped him, stared at him with flared nostrils and shaking hands until whatever shock holding him in place snapped and Ardyn <b>snarled</b>, his magic surging to nip and bite furiously at Nyx’s, “Is <b>that what you think</b>? You think I would sit there at your bedside, not knowing if any breath was about to be your last, for <b>four days</b>, that I would run to the Oracle and the Chosen King and <b>beg</b> on my <b>hands and knees for their aid</b>, that I would risk <b>taking the scourge into my veins a second time</b>,<b> just to kill you at a later date</b>? You think I would go to all that trouble so I could slaughter my only remaining <b>family</b>?”</p>
<p>Nyx swallowed. He … they had told him Ardyn had run for help but somehow he still hadn’t… he dropped his gaze and somehow his whisper of response sounded louder than Ardyn’s yelling had, “I think,” he murmured slowly, “that it would be well within your right to kill the man who betrayed you and sentenced you to two thousand years in isolation and madness. That you would have been well within your rights to leave me there and let me daemonify after everything I put you through in my previous life.” He blinked back the tears that wanted to come, “I think that I <b>missed you</b> more than words can say, I missed you down to my <b>soul</b>, but I know better than to ask to have you back. Somnus was a kinslayer. <b>I</b> was a kinslayer. That’s not a crime that can ever be taken back. Whatever you chose, or choose now, to do … would be nothing less than what I deserve.”</p>
<p>He didn’t dare look up as he fell silent, didn’t dare touch Ardyn with his magic. He just stayed there, his magic an open book of regret and love and sadness, and waited.</p>
<p>Of all the things he had been bracing for, a desperate, clinging hug had not been one of them. Nyx shivered in Ardyn’s arms, “I’m so <b>sorry</b>-!”</p>
<p>“I know. I was there in the rain, brother. I was the hallucination you spoke to of all your sins, all your secrets. I…” Ardyn inhaled, a raspy, wet noise as he pressed their foreheads together, “<b>Astrals</b>, Somnus. I thought I was going to lose you again.”</p>
<p>Nyx tentatively raised his hands to grip Ardyn’s arms, “You … don’t hate me?”</p>
<p>Ardyn sobbed, a quiet, breathy noise Nyx could only hear because they were so close, “Oh, Somnus. I never hated you. I was angry, and I was hurt, but I never hated my little brother.” The fingers on his back tightened, “The Scourge on the other hand … it hated you deeply, and when I lost to it…” He sighed, and there was pain in the noise, “I have done many things, Little Brother. Things far more terrible than the sins you insist on carrying on your shoulders.”</p>
<p>“But I-.”</p>
<p>Ardyn pulled his head away to lock gazes with Nyx, “No. A life for a life, a plague for a plague. Even if I had held it against you, Somnus, you have paid your dues.” Blue eyes seemed to search for something in his as Ardyn whispered, “I <b>forgive you</b>, Little Brother.”</p>
<p>Nyx was the one to sob this time, unable to quite grasp what Ardyn was saying, unable to quite <b>believe</b>-. His brother wrapped an arm around his shoulder and led him to the couch, coaxed him into sitting, then into leaning against him with the same soft hushing sounds he’d always used when they were boys and Nyx-.</p>
<p>Nyx broke.</p>
<p>He buried his face in Ardyn’s shoulder, wheezing apologies in between his shuddering sobs, unable to stop the storm that he had held at bay since putting on the Ring, the storm that had been mostly leashed during their first reunion because of his pain and his belief that he was talking to a figment of his own broken mind. Nyx clung to Ardyn as he shook into pieces, and Ardyn clung to him in return, whispering his own apologies, his own forgiveness, over and over and over until they were both wrung dry of tears and words.</p>
<p>They sat there for what felt like a long time, just … being together. Trying to wrap their heads around the other’s existence —the other’s love—. Then Ardyn stirred, “The others will want to know your welfare. The Oracle in particular has been most distraught.”</p>
<p>Nyx hummed, but the mention of Luna convinced him to sit up and scrub a hand over his face, “Is she … where is she?”</p>
<p>“Out. With the Chosen King I expect, helping the recovery effort in Altissia. Healing the sick in the Oracle’s case. The Chosen King, however, has proven to have a unique talent for a wide array of menial tasks. I have not actually seen it for myself, but from what his Retinue have spoken of, he has engaged in anything from street sweeping to abusing his armiger to haul construction materials around.”</p>
<p>“The Empire?”</p>
<p>“I am the Chancellor,” Ardyn muttered with a touch of self-aimed bitterness, “and the Oracle’s brother is the High Commander, our combined instruction for the Empire to stay well clear of Altissia until the population was not ready to riot at the first sight of Niflheim military presence was not questioned.” Nyx twitched tiredly at the mention of Ravus, wondering how anyone had gotten the pig-headed idiot to cooperate with something that wasn’t hauling Lunafreya back into Niflheim’s “protection”, then decided it wasn’t worth asking about just yet. He was too tired.</p>
<p>Ardyn slowly nudged the two of them upright and began steering Nyx toward the bathroom, “Shower first, you haven’t had one in days. Then we can tell them you’re awake.”</p>
<p>Nyx didn’t complain, didn’t flinch from stripping and stepping into the shower while Ardyn fussed nearby —and if Ardyn stared at the scars littering Nyx’s body from too many close calls as a child in the jungle and a refugee on the beaches and a Kingsglaive in the warfront … Nyx wasn’t going to call him out on it, it wasn’t like Nyx cared—. After four days of not moving, everything was stiff and his hands were shaky, but the hot water was a blessing and Nyx only really paid attention to keeping his braids intact —he’d have to redo them regardless but still— as he scrubbed his skin and scalp raw, trying to cleanse himself of the feeling of his body warping under the infection of the Scourge.</p>
<p>He made a point not to look in the direction of the mirror when he stepped out and toweled off. Refused to so much as glance at the thing as he shrugged on the clothes Ardyn passed him —his clothes, Princess must have given Ardyn his clothes in case he woke up—. If Ardyn noticed his stubborn denial of the mirror’s existence, he didn’t comment, just gently touched Nyx’s elbow to lead him out into the living room again, “Somnus-.”</p>
<p>“Nyx.”</p>
<p>Ardyn paused and Nyx repeated fragilely, “Please. Call me Nyx. I … Somnus died. Somnus <b>hurt</b> you. I know I am Somnus, I know that’s a part of me that will never go away but … I’m Nyx now. I like being Nyx. I would rather-.” He swallowed, “Somnus damned you. Nyx tried to save you. Even if they’re both the same person…”</p>
<p>“I understand,” Ardyn whispered, the touch migrating from his elbow to his shoulders as Ardyn wrapped his arm around him, “Nyx, then. Do you want me to send word to the others?”</p>
<p>Nyx only really wanted to talk to Lunafreya right now, but he supposed it wouldn’t be fair to keep the king and his Retinue in the dark any longer, “Please.” Ardyn squeezed his arm, then reluctantly moved to the door that presumably led out of the suite.</p>
<p>The entire time, Ardyn’s magic stayed snugly tangled with Nyx’s, whispering of affection and worry and sorrow. It felt like an old scar had been ripped open into a wound, a wound that was still bleeding, but had been drained of poison. A wound that was healing. Somehow, someway, beyond every hope Nyx had let himself have … it was healing.</p>
<p>His relationship with his brother had a chance of healing.</p>
<p>And with that hope beating a second rhythm in his chest…</p>
<p>Nyx could face anything.</p>
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